


Merry and Bright

by Neelh



Series: The Mabel Nyoomiverse [3]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Autistic Pines Family, Brief Ableism, Christmas, Gen, Hanukkah, Jewish Pines Family, Nonbinary Mabel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-31
Packaged: 2018-09-11 20:51:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 8,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9021811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neelh/pseuds/Neelh
Summary: A happy Christmas-Christmukkah-Hanukkah-and-also-wedding-at-some-point; and to all, let us fight a yeti.





	1. Day One

Mabel sprinted off the bus, followed by the thudding of five hundred pounds of Waddles. Soos had stopped questioning these things long ago, but when Melody had asked Dipper how they got the pig on the bus in the first place, he had shaken his head and told her that she didn’t want to know.

So, like, probably something using laser torture.

Mr. Pines and Dr. Mr. Pines had come back from their cool ocean voyages a month ago, because apparently their brains weren’t doing too well away from civilisation, so they were back to living at the Shack. Soos had installed bunk beds in Mr. Pines’s old room so it was ready for them, and he put an air freshener in.

Also, the Corduroys had built an extension on the end of the Shack that wasn’t swarming with tourists, so that Abuelita could have a nice little bedroom that didn’t require her breaking her hip by attempting to climb upstairs. Also, Soos’s old break room and-or Dr. Mr. Pines’s old smart person room was kind of Soos and Melody’s shared bedroom now. That’s… That’s pretty nice. He gets to cuddle Melody every night when they sleep!

So, basically, not much had changed, so Dipper and Mabel could stay in the attic.

Speaking of Dipper and Mabel, heh, they were both out of the bus now, and Soos waved to them enthusiastically.

“Hey, dudes!” he called.

As soon as he’d spoken, he fell victim to a projectile Mabel. Zie had tackled him to the ground, using zir superior muscle power to hug him until he couldn’t breathe, so he did his best to return the hug, even though it was really snowy and his pants were getting soaked.

“Soos! You’re here you’re here you’re here! Agh, I’ve been so excited, and Dipper has too, but yeee! Happy Christmas-Christmukkah-Hanukkah-and-also-wedding-at-some-point! Let’s fight a yeti!”

Soos laughed, making his body and Mabel shake. “Heh, that would be so cool! Wait, Hanukkah?”

Dipper sighed, placing three suitcases and a bulging hessian sack only a little smaller than Waddles on the least snowy part of the ground that was not covered in Soos and Mabel. He gave a clearly uninspired attempt to pull his sibling and his friend up, before flopping onto Soos’s chest.

“Yeah,” he groaned, hugging Soos loosely and awkwardly. “The first day of Hanukkah is also Christmas Eve, which sucks.”

“You’re telling me!” replied Soos, sitting up and holding a twin in each arm. “I don’t have a menorah! Or a dreidel! My Abuelita has a nativity scene on the mantelpiece!”

Mabel looked up at both Dipper and Soos, tears in zir eyes. “It’s worse than that!” zie wailed. “We get less presents!”

Soos dropped Dipper in order to fully embrace Mabel. “No, Hambone. You will get so many presents. That’s a promise.”

Smiling, Mabel said, “And you will get _so many sweaters_.”

Waddles oinked.

 

-

 

It would probably be better to forget what happened when Waddles and Mabel saw Mr. Pines and Dr. Mr. Pines again. Either way, Soos ended up mopping up a large puddle of pig urine, and everyone’s clothes had to be washed.

 

-

 

“…And that’s the story of how our ancestors didn’t die,” finished Dipper, to the applause of all those gathered around.

“Great, we already know this, thank God we’re not dead, let’s fight our enemies,” Mr. Pines grumbled. “Can we get onto the presents now?”

Grenda pulled out several small boxes from her faux-leather handbag and started slinging them at everybody present. Pacifica caught hers one-handedly, while McGucket’s hit him square on the forehead. The best catch out of all of them, though, was Candy, who gripped the box between her fuzzy-socked toes.

“Marius and I got a joint bank account!” she bellowed. “These are from both of us, and we gave the rest to Candy to give to you because I’m flying out to see him!”

“In five minutes!” interrupted Candy. “Grenda, you have to go now, or else you will be late!”

Grenda screamed and dove out of the open window, miraculously missing the menorah by mere millimetres.

“Why did we leave that window open again?” Ford asked.

“I knew that this was going to happen,” Candy shrugged. “Do not close it yet, though, she forgot her coat.”

As the group began to unwrap their presents and exchanged more between them, Grenda returned, still screaming, and grabbed a large bright purple anorak from the back of Mr. Pines’s old chair.

Abuelita got everyone new teacups and Soos had helped out a bit with them because he knew how everyone took their tea or coffee or hot chocolate, while Pacifica had somehow obtained diamond-studded radio transmitters for Mr. Pines and Mabel. Everyone else got plain ones that were all sleek and platinum-plated, which was pretty cool too, with an understated elegance that few can truly achieve.

To be honest, Soos felt kind of embarrassed about his presents to everyone. Wendy had helped him, and she smiled at him encouragingly as he held the packages in his arms. It was probably easier for her to do. These were originally her idea, but Soos had already started making them, so she gave him a few pointers.

He bowed his head as the parcels were passed, and as paper was torn and left on the floor as his family and friends stared at their gifts.

Each member of the zodiac had their symbol carved out of wood, while Abuelita had an angel, Candy had a rocket, and Melody had a 3D pixelly heart.

Soos waited for everyone to laugh at him for his sentimentality, shoddy craftsmanship, bringing back past traumas, or anything, but instead he began to feel arms wrapping around him and squeezing, like hugs.

Wait. There were actual _hugs_. Soos was being hugged.

That made more sense than the thing with murderous gorilla apes that Soos was beginning to consider, to be honest.

“I love you, you weird panda bear fiancé,” Melody murmured into his ear.

Mabel was screaming about how beautiful it was.

And Soos heard, quietly, Mr. Pines saying, “You did good, son.”

 

-

 

Like the incident with Waddles and the elder Pineses, the less that was said about Midnight Mass, the better.


	2. Day Two

Mabel was screaming.

This, Dipper, in a drowsy state of half-awareness thought, was not new.

Mabel screamed all the time. Zie screamed when zie woke up, not because of nightmares, but just because zie had been so quiet for so long. Zie screamed when zir cereal was exceptionally delicious. Zie screamed when Grunkle Stan had not purchased fresh milk and instead left cheesy gross milk that went out of date a week ago in the fridge. Zie screamed when Waddles went to munch on something he shouldn’t, like Grunkle Ford’s ray gun.

This time, however, zie was screaming because it was Christmas.

Of course.

It’s not like zie and Dipper were raised (mostly) Jewishly, or that they had shared a Bat Mitzvah the year before going to Gravity Falls.

Okay, the Bat Mitzvah was mostly irrelevant because Dipper couldn’t stand the feelings of dysphoria and told everyone there that he was a boy, so that was a disaster. Mabel came out as nonbinary a few years after that, which made the whole Bat Mitzvah a lot more inaccurate and pointless.

 Mabel screamed into his ear.

Dipper fell out of his nice, warm bed onto the attic carpet, and his voice reached a pitch that sent Waddles running out of the room as quickly as his useless pig legs would go.

 

-

 

Half of Mabel’s presents were just for Christmas, and Dipper knows this because he’s been helping to wrap all of them up using particularly festive paper.

At some point, Mabel had got zir hands on the Pines-Ramirez tree, and now it was covered in glitter and far more candy canes than before.

But despite zir decoration attempts, everyone was still piling into Soos’s Mr. Mystery Mini Mystery Minibus to spend the day with Fiddleford McGucket, half-crazy mechanical engineer extraordinaire.

Dipper was okay with that. Mabel, having been given no warning in advance, wasn’t as happy and had therefore barricaded the door with a sleeping Waddles. Sadly for zir, that was not the only door leading outside.

So, as zie watched Grunkle Stan help Abuelita into the minivan while Ford and Soos ran last-minute repairs, Dipper sat down next to his sibling and wrapped an arm around zir shoulders.

“Okay, Mabel, what’s up?” he asked.

It took a while for Mabel to lean into the hug, and when zie did, Dipper felt a damp patch forming on the front of his alien Santa turtleneck.

“I wanted to spend Christmas at the Shack!” zie sobbed. “We were all gonna have dinner cooked by Abuelita and not by Grunkle Ford, and I put the presents under the tree, and then we were all going to cuddle up and watch _The Father Christmas Contract_!”

Dipper rubbed zir shoulder with his thumb. “We can do all of that at McGucket’s house, Mabel. You know that everyone goes there for Christmas, Soos told us last year.”

“But I wanted it to be _here_ ,” zie sniffed.

“Is it the presents?” he asked.

Mabel nodded.

“We can put them under McGucket’s tree, and you can put all the glitter you want on there,” said Dipper soothingly. Or, well, he hoped he was being soothing. “He’ll let you. Heck, he’ll probably _ask_ you to! He cares about you. We all do, Mabes. And don’t worry about the dinner, either, because Abuelita will still cook it. Lots of people will! It’ll be like in the film _How The Gnarch Stole Hanukkah By Breaking And Entering_ , with that really long table.”

Mabel smiled weakly. “You mean the animated one?”

Dipper grinned. “Yeah, the live-action one took away a lot of the original story by adding ridiculous plot points that never existed and only serves as padding for the main story of a villain who turns good through the realisation of his own mistakes.”

“Yeah, the live-action version sucked,” zie nodded.

Dipper squeezed Mabel’s hand and began to walk towards the tree. “C’mon, I’ll help you pack everything up.”

 

-

 

Dipper didn’t really celebrate Christmas, so he didn’t know if he was right or not, but he was pretty sure that sweet-n-sour popcorn was not normally part of the main course of the traditional dinner. Still, if it was, he couldn’t really risk embarrassing himself with his dismal knowledge on holidays that he has literally never celebrated. So he wasn’t going to say anything. He was just going to keep eating popcorn wrapped in little strips of turkey. They were held together by little cocktail sticks. It was pretty cool, if kind of weird. Either way, living with Mabel, you were bound to get used to some weird flavour combinations.

Pacifica, who was sat next to Mabel, picked at her ice cream sandwich. It was strawberry ice cream in between two slices of wholemeal bread, topped off with tiny little spherical sprinkles in multiple colours. Dipper didn’t blame her. She was eyeing the roast parsnips like they might actually be shallots in disguise.

Still, the dinner was pretty nice. Waddles ate anything that wasn’t wanted, and Mabel’s presents were shared with everyone. Dipper had no idea where she got the money for it. Their grunkles began to regale those assembled with puns both high and lowbrow, even though most of them went over several people’s heads. The joke about Stan’s ex-wife’s aim resulted in a scream of distress from someone who wasn’t Mabel, but Dipper couldn’t figure out who it was before the tables were cleared, music started to play, and he was swept up in a dance with Wendy.

A younger Dipper would have died just thinking about holding hands with Wendy and swaying tensely, but he was just having fun now. Wendy threw long, seductive glances at her latest ex-boyfriend before turning to Dipper and snorting with giggles, because he was kind of a jerk, but not so jerky that he was driven out of town for it. Kind of like Robbie-level jerk. He got really jealous of Dipper over the summer and started to question Wendy on whether she was cheating on him with Dipper.

It was pretty dumb, to be honest. Not even in retrospect, it was just ridiculous, the thought of dating Wendy. Wendy is film marathons and fart jokes and those disease microbe plush toys. endy’s not romance and flowers and kisses. She’s a swift punch to the faces of Mabel’s bullies and a gentle punch on the shoulder as they all laugh about it later.

And though it took a long while, eventually most partygoers went home, leaving the Pines-Ramirezes, the McGuckets, Wendy, Candy, and Pacifica. It was at this point that Tate and Fiddleford (because Dipper is _allowed_ to call him Fiddleford even though it feels weird and kind of wrong on some level, like how he only really uses Mason outside of Gravity Falls) led them to the cinema room, which was more of a surround-sound speaker system with some squashy couches and many Mabel-knitted blankets, all surrounding a huge flatscreen television.

Dipper settled on the floor, with its many cushions and fluffy carpet, and curled up against Mabel and his friends, while the adults sat on the couch behind them. If he leant back, Dipper could feel Grunkle Stan’s bony legs against his spine.

To be honest, the best Christmas present was Mabel’s quiet, excited scream when she began to recognise the opening of _The Father Christmas Contract_.

“Hot Belgian waffles!” Stan said, halfway through the film. “We forgot the menorah!”


	3. Day Three

“Ford! Doc! Wake up!”

Waking up a tired scientist at seven in the morning was not how Wendy was expecting to spend her Boxing Day, but it sure beat making weird noises because her entire body was still exhausted from apocalypse training.

She attempted to prise Ford’s left eyelid open. She saw the whites of his eyes and let it close again, because that was kind of gross.

If Waddles was here, he would lick Ford’s face until the man finally woke up, but Waddles was nicely curled up in Dipper and Mabel’s room, where all three of them were still slumbering peacefully. Wendy didn’t want to wake anyone else up, so it was for the better that Ford had flopped onto the living room couch as soon as they had all got home and promptly had fallen asleep.

And, well, Wendy wasn’t Waddles, and the day she licked anyone’s face, let alone Ford’s, would be the day that her soul left her body permanently out of sheer mortification, because that would be disgusting.

Well, she guessed that she’d have to go to drastic, non-licking, measures.

“ _Stanford Pines_!” she yelled into Ford’s ear.

Ford thrashed for a moment like a salmon on land before falling off of the couch and onto the floor. “Wendy? What the _heck_?”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “We’re out of firewood, Doctor Dork, so we kind of need to go and get some more.”

“Are you-“ Ford shook his head and groaned. “Why did you have to wake me up at whatever time this is, Wendy?”

“Because someone’s probably gonna wake up in a few hours, and they’ll start complaining about the cold, so it’s best to get started now. Plus, you haven’t been doing much heavy lifting recently,” said Wendy, pulling Ford up from off the floor with exaggerated effort.

“Thanks,” he muttered in response. That was rather sarcastic. Maybe Wendy could make an ironic teen circa 2013 out of him yet.

“So, you’re coming?” she asked, like he had a choice.

“Do I have a choice?” replied Ford, like he knew exactly what she meant.

Wendy didn’t answer verbally. She just smirked and went to get his boots from next to the front door. Thankfully, Abuelita had included them in one of her cleaning sprees, so they were less smelly than expected. Wendy was pretty sure that some of that dirt was from another dimension, though.

When she picked up the boots, they felt strangely warm, as well as textured in a way that she had never felt before. The leather looked torn, ragged, and worn in places, but somehow when she rubbed her thumb over the gashes, they felt completely smooth.

Well, there was only one way to figure out how they worked.

“Doc, what is up with your shoes?” she asked, dumping them on his lap.

Ford’s face brightened. “Oh, these old things? I got them in Dimension Tsk’km-pvf! It’s a truly fascinating place, really! They somehow created fabric that can never wear or tear!”

Wendy glanced at where the toes had been nearly worn through; at every single little rip in the leather, and she raised a single eyebrow.

“What are you giving me that look for?” he asked, flushing a rather sweet shade of pink.

Wendy’s eyebrow rose a little more. If he hadn’t spluttered and broken within the next minute, Wendy was pretty sure that her eyebrow would have left her face and flown south for the winter.

“Fine! I got them from a shop in that dimension called Edgy On Purpose, and yes, it was exactly the same as the one in this universe, but everyone there had three heads and sixteen limbs, including legs, arms, tails, and something that humans don’t have and I wasn’t able to ask what it was before I left, but either way I couldn’t get a t-shirt for the band Recc Mug Epp because I wasn’t very good at sewing at the time, so I couldn’t modify any clothes to fit me!”

Finally, Ford took a deep breath. His face had begun to fade from bright puce now, and he pulled his boots on with a kind of nervousness.

Wendy stared at him for a little while before getting her own shoes and coat on. Ford seemed anxious, for some reason. Well, it was probably because of the purposefully edgy stuff.

“That’s normal, you know?” she eventually said as they left the house, armed with a lot of knitwear, unbrushed teeth, and at least fifteen weapons between them.

Ford stared at her and blinked.

That had kind of come out of nowhere, Wendy supposed. “You know, the edgy emo phase. Some people never grow out of it, either, and I guess that can be excused if you grew up in a funeral home. Or if you spent thirty years wandering the multiverse, I guess.”

He still looked confused. Damn, was he really that insecure about it?

“You know, you’ve earnt the right to be an edgelord, if you want,” she continued, smiling encouragingly as they walked deeper into the forest. “Like, you can be badass all you want. You deserve to look cool, even if it’s kind of embarrassing for everyone involved.”

Seriously, hadn’t she made it clear enough for him? He still had the expression of a very confused potoo.

Finally, Ford asked, “What’s an edgelord? What is emo? Are these new terms used by the youth?”

Ah. That would explain it, then.

 

-

 

When Melody came downstairs, Wendy and Ford were in a heated – no pun intended – battle with the wood burner.

“Why?” Ford was saying repeatedly. “I made this house with electrical heating. _Why_?”

Wendy chopped a small log in half with her hand axe. Splinters scattered over the floor like streamers from a party popper.

The older woman backed away slowly. “I’ll leave you two to it,” she said. “You’ll probably burn the house down, but I… I’m not getting into this.”

Ford punched the safety gate around the fireplace and yelled with frustration.

Melody closed the door, then, upon further thought, barricaded it with a chair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> edgy mcedgeford


	4. Day Four

This didn’t seem to be a good day.

Ford knew that he was alone in his room, for there was no nearby sound of another old man breathing, and not many people tended to dare attempt to wake him up after the incident with the flashbacks.

Light was spilling through the gaps in his bedroom curtains like acid bleeding from a Xiorpian’s left tendril, and it burnt his eyes in very much the same way. Well, it didn’t do that, of course, because the sun in this dimension didn’t hurt as much to look at as much as in some other worlds. It just felt that way due to the fact that he was never hit in the eyes by Xiorpian acidic fluids, and he was also exaggerating how much it would likely hurt.

Either way, when he tried to move his limbs, they felt markedly heavier than usual, and not due to any additional weight. He knows why and how it happens; it’s really quite simple! He had researched this when he first began to experience these symptoms, just before college began. His brain was simply releasing serotonin, then reabsorbing it too quickly for his body to really register the chemical that was supposed to give him, in layman’s terms, the energy to do anything.

The most likely explanation was that, in his excitement at being with his family again, Ford had simply neglected to take his medication. Not out of any misguided belief that he no longer needed it, but because he is frankly quite easily distracted and single-minded to a fault. Now that the rush of joy was over, his mind was beginning to feel the side effects.

He tried to get out of bed. He tensed his muscles, gritted his teeth, then let his entire body melt.

_O that this too too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew!_

No, he was done with that frame of mind. This was simply a minor setback. In a day or so, his mind would be back to normal, or, well, as normal as his brain can get.

Distantly, he heard the family running around downstairs.

Yes, it was Melody and Soos’s wedding soon. To be honest, the organisation of it had been neglected due to the arrival of the twins. Not that the kids arriving was a bad thing! It was a very good thing! Soos would be heartbroken if Dipper and Mabel were not at his wedding.

Though, he would probably be less upset if Ford was not there.

No, those thoughts were behind him. Ford knew that he was important to his family.

It’s just pretty hard when his mind ignores all of the evidence like some kind of a mental kangaroo court. And he’d been sued in a dimension where all lawyers were kangaroos, where it went exactly how he’d expected it, considering the Earth metaphor it seemed to emulate.

Nevertheless, his mind was still not in a particularly good space.

Okay. Twitching his fingers and toes might be a good way to start.

Who cared. He wasn’t going to do anything, anyway.

 

-

 

“Grunkle Ford?”

Ford blinked. Had he drifted off to sleep again? It was likely; the sky had dulled to the dark grey of a winter sunset. Distantly, he felt a brief flicker of gratitude that for the next few months at least, the days would pass more quickly than usual.

“Grunkle Ford, you’ve been in bed all day. You need to get up.”

He tried to grunt in response to Dipper’s voice, but his throat was dry and all he could manage was an audible exhalation.

“Yeah, I know. Soos has gone to pick up Melody’s family from Portland so he can stay the night and let them have one final go at making sure that he’s a decent guy before the wedding. But also we were gonna light the menorah. You can join us, if you want. Mabel made cookies for afterwards, too.”

Huh. He tried to sniff the air, and found that he could detect the traces of baked sugar and icing hanging around near Dipper. He needed food. Ford knew this, but at the same time, he just couldn’t get the energy.

“Would you… Do you need Mabel or somebody to help you downstairs?”

Ford’s mouth twitched into an apologetic smile. Probably. He couldn’t really see what he looked like, but it seemed to have the desired effect, because Dipper said that she’d be there in a minute and left the room.

 

-

 

The cookies were delicious.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry. today was difficult to write


	5. Day Five

Soos Ramirez was a mystery to most of Melody’s family. Even her mother had only met him a few times before Melody decided to get married to him, and even since, they’d barely been able to understand what he was.

Alice Chandler was Melody’s cousin. She wasn’t particularly close to the woman, having seven or so years between them in age, but there was still a strong sense of family loyalty in her, so frankly, she was kind of unconvinced that this man was not an alien, gopher, or kidnapper. Maybe all three. Who knows?

The point is that it’s Alice. Alice didn’t know.

The thing is, Soos acted like some kind of angel crossed with a very confused puppy! He had these eyes that simultaneously said _I love you_ and _I’m an idiot_.

Maybe he was cheating? Alice wrote that down in her spiral-bound pink notebook, just in case.

 

-

 

 **Hypothesis One:** Soos is cheating

 **Experiment:** Flirt with him.

 

“Heya, big boy,” said Alice, purring as she leaned up against Soos.

“Heh, yeah, Melody calls me a giant anime panda. So does Mabel, come to think of it,” Soos chuckled.

Aha!

“Who’s Mabel?” asked Alice, trying to hide her grin of delight. She had him! He was going to own up to dating another woman at the same time!”

“Dude, Mabel’s like, so cool!” Soos grinned. “Zie came to Gravity Falls when zie and zir brother were twelve or something, and then Dipper found a journal in the woods, and long story short, we discovered that Mr. Pines has a secret twin brother, I started dating Melody, and the apocalypse happened for a few days.”

Alice blinked.

“Oh yeah!” he continued. “Mine and Melody’s first date! That’s, that’s a good story. Okay, so my abuelita said that I needed a date to Reggie’s wedding. Reggie’s my cousin. Hey, you’re Melody’s cousin! You two would totally get along, dawg!”

“The date?” she asked, slightly bewildered. And why would being related to Melody make her get along well with some Soos-like being? What was a _dawg_? Was _she_ a dawg?

Soos nodded, grinning. “Well, I was having a pretty hard time getting a girl to talk to me, so I bought a game called Romance Academy Seven or something. Come to think of it, it might have been eight. Or eight point seven. But yeah, the game turned out to be alive, and she was called .GIFfany, and she kind of became obsessed with me? But I thought she was just a game, even though she was really nice, so when Mabel and Dipper dragged me out to talk to more girls, she followed me through the electricity or something? But eventually I just felt sad so I rode a tiny train, you know, like they have at the mall, and Melody came up to me and said that she thought I was cool, and then we decided to go to Hoo-Ha Owl’s Pizzamatronic Jamboree later that day, but when we did that, .GIFfany took over the squirrel girl robot, and that’s why Gravity Falls doesn’t have a Hoo-Ha Owl’s Pizzamatronic Jamboree anymore. Also, .GIFfany is in a relationship with the video game guy that Dipper brought to life one time, so, heh, that turned out well. Anyway, what were you saying?”

 

-

 

 **Hypothesis Two:** Soos is crazy and therefore also possibly a murderer

 **Experiment:** Ask him for his medical history under the pretense that you are a doctor. He might kill you, but your death will prove his unworthiness for your cousin, and also probably send him to jail. You’ll be dead though, which, meh.

 

“I’m going to need to see your medical history,” said Alice, stopping Soos as he began to walk up the stairs. “I need to make sure that you’re not mentally ill. I’m a doctor.”

Soos blinked, looking a little taken aback. Ha! She had him now!

“I’m not mentally ill, Doctor Alice,” he said, and somehow he sounded _disappointed_ , of all things. “But even if I was, there wouldn’t be anything wrong with that. Like, most of the Pineses are, and they’re like my family, dude! And we think that I might be autistic, but that’s not really a mental illness, dawg, ‘cause Dipper says that it’s more processing the world in a weirder way and Mabel said that it’s like being not autistic, but everyone else is just stupid and thinks that you have the emotional understanding of a flea. But Doc, dude, it’s not a big deal! You can look at my medical history, but it’s not like there’s much that’s interesting there.”

Alice blinked, then made an attempt at rethinking her life. A few seconds later, she realised that she might need more than a minute to completely change her understanding of the world, unless…

 

-

 

 **Hypothesis Three But It Was Actually One Of The First Ones But Logic Ruled It Out But Screw Logic Because It Makes Sense To Her, Dang It, And She’s Going To Believe It Until It’s Proved Wrong:** Soos is an alien.

 **Experiment:** There really isn’t one past asking him.

 

“Are you an alien?” asked Alice, staring at him in disbelief.

Soos shrugged. “Nah, I don’t think so. It’d be really cool, though, right? Seeing space and all that? I’ve seen the future and met aliens, but the future sucked, kind of, and the aliens were kind of mean, to be honest. It tried to murder Dipper and impersonated the author, but it was actually the guy from the bean tins.”

Alice sighed. “I don’t understand you,” she said. “I don’t know who you are, I don’t trust you, and to be honest I’m kind of scared of you.”

“Aw, Alice dude, I’m sorry,” he replied, and for some reason, for the first time in a long while, Alice could barely detect the slightest twinge of sarcasm.

“You are,” she said, barely aware of her own throat and mouth and tongue working together to form the words into sound. “You’re ridiculously sincere!”

“Cool!” grinned Soos, baring his weird rodent teeth in the stupidest, most endearing grin that Alice had seen ever, or at least outside of pictures of silly dogs on the internet. “I’m not sure what else I could be, but it’s really nice that you think of me like that, dawg!”

There it was again. Alice furrowed her brows.

“Actually, can I ask one more question? After this one, obviously.”

Soos winked awkwardly, with a finger-guns pose that he is definitely copying from somebody else. “Shoot.”

“What is _dawg_?” asked Alice.


	6. Day Six

“It’s tomorrow!” screamed Mabel, flapping zir hands in zir sleeves so that Melody feared that someone would probably have their eye taken out by a fluffy Hanukkah sweater. It featured a screaming dreidel. Melody was beginning to notice a trend in Mabel’s preferred vocalisations.

“I know,” she smiled in response, setting places at the multitude of tables that were residing in the Shack’s museum for the time being. “I’m excited too, you know!”

“Well, duh!” Mabel laughed, retrieving several bedazzled napkin rings from one of zir sweater’s internal pockets and pulling several paper napkins through each one in a way that made them look like ruffled pompoms, somehow. “Thanks for letting me be a flower girl-person-whatever! I’ve already sewn half of Abuelita’s garden onto my skirt. That includes the weeds. And grass. And soil. There’s a few rocks, there, too, but I had to use a glue gun for those.”

Melody stared. “You’re not actually going to wear that for the ceremony, right?”

“Am I… Not supposed to?” replied Mabel, looking up from organising two napkins into origami of fighting swans.

“No,” said Melody, running a hand through her hair. “I’ve got matching dresses for you and my cousins. They’re sort of a blushy pink, with a flared waist, and you’ve all got different jackets to wear with them. You have a little capelet! I’m sorry, I thought I’d let you know.”

“You probably did, but I forgot,” Mabel said, sighing at the ground. “It’s okay, it’s my fault for assuming things.”

“No, it’s not! It’s alright, Mabel,” Melody said, patting zir on zir shoulder. “You can always wear the skirt at the party afterwards!”

Mabel ran a hand through zir hair. It had been short for a while, but Mabel had taken to wearing zanily-coloured wigs quite often because zie had started to miss the heavy weight of zir old long locks. Today, though, it seemed that zie wanted to look less feminine, as zie was wearing loose blue jeans and no wig, instead leaving zir fluffy crow’s nest of a natural haircut to its own devices.

“What about my hair?” zie asked. “I don’t have any socially acceptable wigs! Because I totally get that you’re the bride and the attention should be on you and Soos and not my ridiculous fashion sense-“

Melody hushed zir. “Mabel. Mabel, it’s okay. We’re getting a stylist in tomorrow, and she’ll do your hair into a neat pixie style.”

“Melody, pixies have really long hair. They style it like lion manes. It looks really cool, and also it can poke you in the eye really hard,” Mabel said matter-of-factly.

Well, okay.

“Just trust me, it’ll look great,” said Melody, ruffling Mabel’s hair and leading zir out of the museum, tables fully laid. “My family should be here soon. I don’t think that they know that we’re celebrating Hanukkah.”

“Should we make it look as satanically ritualistic as possible?” Mabel asked, smiling brightly.

Melody broke into a grin. “You know, that wouldn’t be half bad.”

 

-

 

Ford sprayed them with holy water as soon as they began faking possession after he had recited the prayer and lit the menorah. It turned out that you really do make holy water by boiling the hell out of it, but thankfully their burns weren’t serious, and Melody’s wedding dress had long sleeves to hide the bandages.

Mabel opening Melody’s present was the best part for her, though. The look on zir face when zie opened the box containing a silver headband with a tiny succulent on the side was priceless, especially when she broke into a smile and joyfully named the plant Binkles.

 

-

 

One of her cousins cornered her after the night was over and everyone had gone to bed or was headed over to McGucket’s house in Soos’s minibus.

“Hey, Alice,” said Melody, smiling apologetically. “I’m sorry that Mabel got a cooler hair accessory than you. She’s a weird kid, and I saw that online and I knew she’d love it.”

She didn’t mention that she’d gone through the same process for Alice’s UFO necklace and Jane’s heart-shaped hairclip. To be honest, they were both pretty simple when compared to having a mini flowerpot on the side of your head.

“It’s not that,” said Alice, her face drawn in a frown. “I just need to tell you something.”

Well, it was going to be pretty clear at some point that Gravity Falls was weirdness central. It was only natural that Alice, conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, would figure it out first.

“Soos is precious and you need to protect and love him forever,” stated Alice.

Melody blinked. “That’s kind of the idea of marrying him? To be honest, I thought you were going to say something about the weirdness.”

“That was the second thing,” she said, still with her flat expression, though her eyes shone like Mabel’s art projects. “Aliens exist and I’m going to date one.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here is where i, the author, scream about mabel's self-centredness and how important that is to me because i find it difficult to understand when i'm being too len-absorbed in lenness and when i'm being too peopley and ignoring myself
> 
> mabel is better at balancing these two things at twelve than i am at eighteen, but she slips up sometimes. it's easy to get carried away when looking awesome is part of the equation


	7. Day Seven

“Do you, Jesus Ramirez-Pines, take Melody Hope to be your lawfully wedded wife?” the local vicar, Reverend Dobsicle, said.

Soos nodded, grinning broadly. “I do, dude!”

Reverend Dobsicle smiled gently and turned to Melody. “And do you, Melody Hope, take Jesus Ramirez-Pines to be your lawfully wedded husband?”

“Yeah!” Melody beamed. “Oh, wait, I do. I… I kind of messed that one up.”

Soos kissed her.

Stanley Pines, through his tears, realised that it was kind of weird to watch the kid actually kiss someone. He thought that Soos would just be a twelve-year-old kid forever. Kind of like Dipper and Mabel, he guessed. When he sees them, he has to blink a bit sometimes to connect the strong jawlines and short ruffled hairstyles to the kids he looked after for the summer once.

Speaking of those two kids, both of them looked to be at complete opposites of the comfort spectrum. Mabel, of course, was in zir element. Wearing fancy clothes and a little fluffy cape that hugged her neck like those sweaters she hadn’t stopped wearing since she was twelve was right up her alley, even if she wasn’t flapping like a baby bird while watching the wedding unfold.

Dipper, on the other hand, looked as uncomfortable in a suit as Ford did when Old Man McGucket, forgetting Ford’s particular romantic inclinations towards absolutely nobody ever, flirted with him. At least McGucket’s crush was over quickly. Dipper would be stuck in that pink tie for a while.

Welp, that meant more blackmail material.

It wasn’t even that Dipper in a suit was the weirdest thing that Stan had seen so far today, but it was by far the most amusing. Weirder but less funny things that had happened included Melody’s bouquet coming to life and eating her veil, five gnomes trying to co-opt the wedding for their newest victim that Soos had employed three months ago, and Ford looking comfortably dapper in a suit.

Also, Soos kissing Melody. That was pretty weird. Hey, why was Stan even in a church? He’s Jewish! Kind of. Either way, churches made everything uncomfortable, including a short peck on the lips that was going on for a very long time… Hey maybe it’s- Nah, they were going at it again.

Stan couldn’t even clear his throat to show discomfort, because this was his son’s wedding!

…Welp. Just. He’d just thought that. That wasn’t going to be easily forgotten.

Reverend Dobsicle had a small shrimp in his moustache. It was quivering slightly. The moustache, not the shrimp. Well, the shrimp kind of was, but only because it was stuck to the moustache. Little hairy lip eyebrow. With a shrimp in it.

Could they stop kissing? The reception at McGucket’s house was going to have an open soda bar, and Stan was looking forward to it.

 

-

 

It was over. Finally.

They had basically paraded across the town until everyone had reached Fidds’s house, and Stan was pretty sure that he saw Mabel chanting to the rhythm of Waddles’s snorts and getting Soos to crowdsurf. That wasn’t really surprising, come to think of it. And, to be honest, convincing him and Ford to set up a fireworks show with whatever junk they had in their pockets, which of course included gunpowder and glitter, wasn’t really a surprise either.

Neither was the fact that not only had Mabel already packed a change of clothes for her and Dipper in their shared spare room at McGucket’s, but zie had also put the menorah in the window next to the door.

When? How? The answers to all of these mysteries and more may lie at the Mystery Shack, 618 Gopher Road, Gravity Falls, Roadkill County, Oregon. You can’t miss it, there are rhyming signs advertising it all the way up and down the highway.

So there Mabel was, in a skirt that looked like a complete mess and a turtleneck made entirely out of glittery gold yarn except for the felt menorah in the middle in which every candle was dressed like a member of their family.

Melody’s dress took up most of the middle, and it was surprisingly accurate to life. Little felt candle Dipper was wearing his change of clothes that consisted of his normal outfit but washed, though his embroidered face still looked like the moody internet cat.

Candle Ford was wearing actual fabric from Ford’s suit. Stan, in that moment, decided to definitely not ask, no matter how curious he might be, because Stan was pretty sure that Mabel had just asked Ford for part of his suit and he’d obliged unquestioningly, because zie had him wrapped around zir little finger. And it was a good thing that she had two little fingers, one on each hand, because Stan was wrapped around the other one just as much and that was a weird mental image.

So, yeah. Open soda bar. Stan just hoped that Mabel hadn’t gotten to that yet, either. He didn’t want Mabel Juice, not ever. Ford had drunk it once and accidentally built an aeroplane. It was full-sized. Stan was pretty sure that he recognised some of the parts from the portal.

So, that was fun.

Pacifica had gone to dance with Mabel, blushing the entire time, while Dipper and Wendy were doing the Macaroni to the slow ballad playing after Soos and Melody’s first dance, which had quite literally flown over everyone’s heads as they were wearing jetpacks at the time.

“That looks pretty awkward,” Stan laughed as Ford sat down beside him at the soda bar.

When Ford simply blinked in response, Stan nodded purposefully towards Pacifica and Mabel.

 “Even I can see that she has a crush on zir,” winced Ford, shaking his head. “Do you think Mabel knows?”

“Nope,” said Stan, popping his mouth on the _p_. “Zie is even more oblivious than you. Actually, I think zie might take after you in the romance department.”

“You’re kidding,” Ford snorted. “There’s no way on earth that Mabel doesn’t have romantic feelings, in general if not for Pacifica.”

Stan shrugged. “Weirder things have happened. I mean, I didn’t think Soos would ever get a girlfriend, and here we are.”

“Neither did I,” said Ford, “and he was already dating Melody when you brought me back.”

They both shared a laugh, and Stan took a long sip of his Pitt Cola.

“I’m proud of him,” said Stan abruptly. “You know, Soos. Not just for the wedding thing, but that’s pretty amazing. ‘S definitely gonna last longer than my marriage. But just… In general.”

Ford smiled. “I understand. I can’t say that I feel the exact same way, since I’ve known him for a shorter time than you have, but he’s still my nephew.”

Stan blushed a little. He didn’t want the father-son thoughts to happen. He’d start crying again.

Welp, too late for that. Today had been one huge _welp_. Welpalooza or whatever.

“I can’t believe he’s come this far,” Stan said, trying to choke back his tears. “I can’t believe that Melody’s such a wonderful woman. I’m so glad that they’re going to live happy lives together! Ford, this is like a soap opera, but one where everyone lives happily ever after!”

“You’re going to love Janet Eyret,” Ford muttered, patting Stan on the shoulder, but he still cracked a smile.

“I’m not reading your nerd books,” Stan sobbed. “Not until tomorrow, Ford.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ♒☯✞ follow for more soft dobsicle ✞☯♒


	8. Day Eight

Mabel looked at the little wrapped packages that were zir final gifts for Hanukkah, and also the year. So many things had happened that zie kind of felt nostalgic for when zie was a little kind-of-girl and had just been sent down with her brother to Gravity Falls to spend the summer as child labour for her Grunkle Stan, then accidentally almost ended and saved the world.

For one thing, Baby-Mabel had averted a huge disaster in politics by abolishing the Electoral College and thus thwarting the efforts of the rich white guy Smonald Smump in 2016. That was a good idea. Zie was proud of Baby-Mabel. Baby-Mabel had also been pretty bad at some things, but in hindsight, she was twelve and scared of the future.

Nowadays, things could only get brighter for Mabel.

Zie woke up before anyone else at ten in the morning. That was weird, but zie got the shower to zirself without anyone else using the hot water. It left too much time for zir to overthink, though, and Mabel discovered that, well, Baby-Mabel still lived on in Current-Almost-Adult-Mabel’s fear of the future.

It wasn’t that anything bad was going to happen. Zie was okay. There was nothing to be afraid of anymore. No fascist uprising, no Bill Ciphers hanging around in people’s heads, no inevitable loneliness. There was just Mabel Pines and zir family.

Zie was happy! Soos and Melody had just got married, finally! Dipper and Wendy had achieved something better than kissy stuff; completely comfortable friendship with no lingering romantic awkwardness. Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford hadn’t argued for the entirety of Hanukkah, which was a true miracle considering how much they’d bicker over coffee and sleeping. Even Waddles was just oinking happily in his sleep, dreaming little piggy dreams.

Zie had decided on these presents a while ago. They were ridiculous, but Mabel was desperately hoping that it would be considered charming instead of immature. Zie had a load of beads and a load of string, and, at the time, it had felt like a good idea. Now it just seemed weird and childish.

Seriously, zie was one of the youngest people giving out gifts! And, seriously, friendship bracelets? Like, that would have been charming when zie was five. Not seventeen.

But, come on, this was zir last year as a kid. And even though Mabel knew that growing up didn’t have to mean, well, growing up, zie was still a little wary of adulthood and the general taxpaying (or avoiding, if you are over the age of sixty, live on a boat, legally dead and/or back from wandering the multiverse). It just felt weird. Zie wasn’t a grownup. Zie was a Mabel. Mabels were sparkly and generally dissatisfied with puberty, not taxpayers. Not that zie wasn’t dissatisfied with taxpayers, because richer people could stand to pay more and give poorer people a break, but the point remained that Mabel still felt like a kid.

Well, zie’d best make the most of zir childhood and have some Off-Brand Brandt Flandgkts. That cereal was both delicious and also highly mysterious. Currently, Mabel’s theory was that it contained Smile Dip, aged for a century in a crypt.

But anyway, it was time for a new year.

 

-

 

Mabel carefully lined up the Yule Log with the menorah, singing the blessings and prayers softly under zir breath, before letting out an almighty pterodactyl screech and tipping the cake so that the candles hit the ones on the menorah.

“Bring it on, Two-Oh-One-Seven!” zie yelled out of the window. “I once released a girl group made up of five selkies beck into the ocean! I’ll survive becoming an adult and you won’t stop me!”

“Mabel, are you okay?” asked Candy, laying a hand on zir shoulder.

“Yeah, I just needed to let that out,” zie replied, placing the Yule Log carefully back down on the table and admiring the menorah for a moment. Waddles snuffled and oinked around zir legs, so zie leaned down a little to scratch behind his ears.

“It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” said Wendy solemnly, and Melody pouted.

“What about my wedding dress?” she asked in a playfully grumpy way.

Wendy shrugged. “Well, there’s different kinds of beauty. You in the wedding dress was, like, classic art beautiful, but Mabel’s more, you know, Dadaism or whatever.”

“You know Dadaism?” asked Grunkle Ford, eyebrows rising in either enthusiasm or scepticism. Judging by his disappointed puppy-frown after Wendy answered negatively, it was the former.

“It’s cool as a general concept, but arty stuff just isn’t what I do,” she said. “And, like, flying whales with laser eyes superimposed on an article from the fifties about a house being sold is just, you know, _weird_.”

“I’m pretty sure that we all know weird here,” Melody smiled.

The family shared a laugh as Old Man Mister Grunkle Fiddleford McGucket, who Mabel had been finding difficult to name properly since he’d stopped living at the dump and started mentoring Candy and started being friends with Grunkle Ford again, and zie had officially lost zir train of thought. As Fidds McGucket started passing around his final presents to everyone, Mabel’s laughter faded out a little earlier than it probably normally would have. Zie had put the friendship bracelets, each individually and messily wrapped, under the Christmas tree, but it was still just bugging zir. What if everyone laughed at zir because zie wouldn’t grow up? That would just suck.

Nah, Mabel was just being paranoid. If zie wasn’t careful, zie’d turn into a less sweaty Dipper, and then zir parents would just be overwhelmed by anxiety. Zie’s Mabel Pines, and zie had awesome family and friends. They would love the bracelets, or at least pretend to love them and hide them in a drawer somewhere.

But when the time finally came for zir family to unwrap the presents under the tree for the eighth time since Christmas, Mabel found zirself being hugged so tightly that zie wanted to cry.

As a slight digression, Mabel was often told that autistic people tended to not relate to others, but those people tended to conflate multiple slightly different things into one big thing, like saying that milk chocolate and dark chocolate were the same thing, which they obviously were not, are not, and will never be, ever. But basically, Mabel was told that zie couldn’t have empathy and be autistic.

As zie thought, it was slightly off-topic, but it still felt like a distant narration, trying to vaguely put into perspective the sheer amount of love in zir heart that zie was both generating and absorbing from the people around zir like an empathy-emotion vacuum-cloner thing. It was like every time a speck of love hit Mabel, it just multiplied and bounced back out to everyone else and also filled zir chest, and it just felt like too much and started trickling out of zir eyes in tears.

Zie had so much more wool, now, and some of it was even the extreme chunky type where one stitch was like two inches wide, and zir family had got zir that because they loved zir. Mabel had put zir metal-stamping kit to good use and personalised axes for Wendy and knuckledusters for Grunkle Stan and zie was going to engrave knives for Grunkle Ford, but thought better of it and gave him a lot of pen nibs where each one, by size, was labelled as G-R-U-N-K-L-E.

But still, Mabel’s dumb friendship bracelets were just as appreciated as the most useful and expensive gifts, and if zie had to guess why, Mabel would shrug, and just continue hugging her huge, extended family and her huge, oinky pig.

Even when Grenda burst back through the window, barely avoiding the menorah and carrying Marius over her shoulder, just in time to join the hug and hear the fireworks bring in the New Year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy 2017, guys. i'm going to spend the new year with my family and my puppy
> 
> if you feel capable, take this coming year by the ear and be a generous and kind as you can possibly be. i love you. thank you for hanging out with me on this fic

**Author's Note:**

> okay, so for this fic, i am mostly going by my experiences as a mostly-secular christmas-celebrator raised by not-very-practising christians and who attended christian-centric schools, and also by the writings of actual jewish people. please tell me if i get anything wrong!!! i don't want to hurt anybody, i just want to write about the pines family getting a lot of presents in winter!!!
> 
> the story title is from white christmas, which is the best christmas song due to it being written by an agnostic jewish person


End file.
